An out-of-control computer game is providing insights into how virulent diseases spread in the real world. A disease designed to challenge experienced players in the online game World of Warcraft has instead devastated the game’s entire online world after spreading by means of teleportation. Now researchers think this virtual epidemic might help them model real world situations, with the game becoming in Time’s words “a pandemic lab” (press release). “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour,” paper author Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, told the BBC. The new paper is published in Lancet Infectious Diseases.

In 2005 World of Warcraft’s designers created a ‘disease’ that certain characters became infected with. However the ability in the game to teleport your character meant the disease spread further and faster than expected. According to Reuters Fefferman’s first-hand experience of the online plague led her to identify a ‘stupid factor’: “Someone thinks, ‘I’ll just get close and get a quick look and it won’t affect me’.”

Gaming sites seem pleased, although Gaming Today asks: “Are they just going to “borrow” Second Life for a while and see how people behave after their skin starts breaking out in boils?” The World of Warcraft members’ forum has a thread discussing this topic, although it seems to have rapidly degenerated into a minor slanging match.

Image: WoW during epidemic / Blizzard EntertainmentInc, 2007.